The prior art has disclosed a number and variety of interactive electronic calendaring systems and methods. The objective of all of these systems is primarily to assist the person who, for a number of different reasons, maintains a calendar of future events containing various information about the event at entry points on the calendar which relate to the time of the event.
The increase of personal computers and intelligent workstations in recent years has made it possible for calendar owners to establish and maintain their calendars on these interactive type data processing systems.
Two general types of interactive electronic calendaring systems have thus evolved in the art. In one type of calendaring system, the owner of the calendar is generally also the user of the workstation and that workstation is generally not a part of a larger network. Generally, in these types of systems, the calendar functions involve presenting a screen to the user representing a day calendar divided into a number of time periods or time slots. Each period is capable of displaying a limited amount of text that the user enters. In some systems, the day calendar can scroll vertically to present more time periods to the user or horizontally to present longer text entries. The operator can generally "page" forward or backward and, in most arrangements, can display a requested date. These calendaring arrangements generally do not limit the type of event that is calendared nor the terminology employed at any of the entry points and, to that extent, function in the same manner as conventional manual calendars or appointment books. The electronic calendaring method and systems do have an advantage over the prior art manual calendaring of events in that the user generally has the ability to scan a time span involving a large number of days and identify calendared events quite rapidly. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,645,238, 4,591,840 and 4,626,836 describe representative prior art methods and systems involving electronic type calendar arrangements.
The other type of calendaring arrangement that has developed in the prior art involves multi-user environments having a large number of terminals or workstations which are generally part of a larger communication network that has been established to permit the users to interact with each other and with data maintained on the data processing system. In this environment, a user at a terminal or workstation can send a message to one or more of the other users on the network and is notified when the addresses has received and read the message.
In both of the above environments there are two general formats employed for displaying calendar data related to a particular day. The first day calendar format comprises a plurality of time slots which are specifically identified as such on the screen. In this time structured format the length of the time slot period for a particular application is fixed. In one application the time slot period may be fixed at 15 minutes. In another application the time slot period may be fixed at 30 minutes. Similarly the starting time and ending time for the day being displayed are generally pre-established in particular applications but different applications will have different starting and ending times for the calendar days. For example in one application the day calendar may cover 24 hours, i.e., 12:00 midnight to 11:59 p.m. In another application the day calendar will cover only 12 hours, i.e., from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Since most display screens of interactive terminals are limited to generally 80 columns of text per line and approximately 20 lines of text, most calendar applications cannot display, on one screen, the entire period representing one complete day of calendared events. As a result the day calendar is allowed to scroll vertically between the starting time slot and the ending time slot. As a result the user generally cannot determine what free time is available merely by a quick glance at the calendar screen. The calendar must be scrolled. In a scenario where the user is attempting to determine what day is available for a three hour meeting in the late afternoon, he must page through each day calendar and when the calendar has to be scrolled to see the late afternoon time slots, considerable time can be involved.
In addition, in most applications, since the descriptive area is generally limited to one line to permit a larger number of time slots to be displayed, the description of the event is generally very cryptic. While some applications allow for horizontal scrolling to permit less cryptic descriptions of calendar events to be entered, the general consensus in the art is that such an approach merely confuses the operator and while it may alleviate the problem of cryptic descriptions, it creates other problems of the same nature and magnitude.
The second format employed in some electronic calendaring methods does not structure the number of descriptive lines allocated to a time slot or a calendar event. In this later format, the operator enters the start time and the end time of the event in prescribed areas on the first line and then can enter as much text as necessary (within reason) to describe the event plus any comments, reminders, or directions that are appropriate. The next event is calendared before or after the first event depending on the time of the event and is also allowed as many lines as is necessary to describe that event. The main advantage of this second format is that the user feels less constrained and generally is not faced with the problem of deciphering some cryptic entry that was made a month earlier. In environments where a user is permitted to use another persons calendar, a higher level of understanding of the events that are calendared is also achieved.
There are of course some disadvantages because if there are a number of entries for the day, the available free time is not that readily discernible, but requires a rather concentrated scan of the starting and ending times of each entry to determine the length of free time that might be available between calendar units. Considerable more vertical scrolling time may also be involved depending on the number of events calendared and the levels at which they are described.
Users of electronic calendaring systems generally favor one system or the other and quite often management is reluctant to change from one format to the other, even though a newer electronic calendaring system having considerable added function, may be available. The trauma for some users involved in the change of formatting approaches might discourage some from participating in the system.
The present invention is directed to a method of displaying to the user, calendar information in a manner that maintains the advantages of both formats so that prior users of either prior art format need not change their way of calendaring data but gain added advantages and functions over earlier prior art methods with which they are familiar.